Golden Lads and Girls
by songsmith
Summary: After the White Stag, there are those left behind.
1. Chapter 1

Oreius is supervising a session in the training yard when he hears the first scream. His first though is an accident, because they do happen even with all the precautions they take. Someone can be careless, or a hair too slow, or equipment can break. He turns to see, already opening his mouth to call for healers (always near at hand, here), when he sees it's Myanae screaming. She's on her knees, doubled over and clutching at the ground, and that's when he realizes something serious is wrong. Dryads are difficult to wound, and Myanae's an experienced soldier, a veteran of the Northern Giants campaign; she wouldn't still be screaming long after the blow. "Get her to her tree!" he orders, trotting over to help her sparring partner, a very junior and very frightened satyr, pick her up. Several others are rushing to help, including the healers, but often the medicine for a dryad is settling back into their tree. Oreius is thankful she's a Cair Paravel resident; her beech is a pretty little thing just outside the walls.

About then, he becomes aware that Myanae isn't the only one screaming. There's more distant noise filtering in from elsewhere in the Cair. More dryads? he wonders, heartrate picking up. Some threat in the forest that escaped their watch? He goes with the party half-carrying Myanae to her tree, his hand on his sword and all his sense on high alert. Before they've gotten her out of the Cair, her screams have subsided into soft, desperate weeping that is even more heart-wrenching to hear. She doesn't seem aware of them at all, conscious only of whatever pain is eating at her.

On the grounds, as they come to a bridge over one of the Cair's half-decorative, half-practical streams, a faun comes racing up to them. "General! General Oreius! Something's wrong with the naiads!"

The naiads too? Stars above, what's happened? He signals the others to take Myanane on without him, and turns to getting the faun calmed enough for a coherent tale.

"I was talking to Sulanthra, just down that way," he explains, pointing. "And some of her sisters were playing with the Squirrels in the Oak grove. Then suddenly they all lost their forms - Sula was in the middle of a sentence! - and dropped away into their waters. All of them, exactly at the same time!" The same time the dryads screamed, Oreius knows.

By noon he's learned that every dryad and every naiad in the Cair suffered the same fate. He's also learned that every Tree on the grounds reverted at the same moment, and no amount of coaxing can persuade any of them to devolve and talk to anyone. Ordinarily one could ask a dryad to talk to a Tree that refused to form a face, but the dryads aren't in any condition to be talking right now. The merfolk bring word that the nereids, saltwater cousins of the naiads, children of the tides, likewise dissolved back into their waters. Oreius isn't at all surprised to find it happened at the same moment.

By afternoon reports have arrived from all over Narnia, the same news repeated again and again. Every land and water spirit in Narnia is reacting to - something. He's dispatched extra patrols and called up forces to strengthen their border troops, but something tells him this isn't a problem swords will be able to solve.

The Bird arrives at dusk, exhausted from flying to her limits without pause. Oreius passes her off to a Dwarf lieutenant with orders to rest and eat, and stands fingering the message she carried for a long moment. He doesn't need to read the stars to know the news it holds will change everything. At last he slides a finger under the seal, snapping the impressed lion in half, and unfolds the paper.

The phrases are short, stark. _Party separated. Horses returned. Four empty saddles._

It goes on, but Oreius reads no more. He knows as surely as he knows the grip of a sword and the wheeling of the skies that behind him, in the quiet, worried Cair, there will be four empty thrones.


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's Note: I had not intended "Golden Lads" to be more than a one-shot. However, I had written this piece some time ago, and wanted to collect all my fic in one place. It's thematically linked to "Golden Lads", so rather than adding another very short one-shot, I decided to place it here as a second chapter._

Cair Paravel is in mourning. It is a familiar condition, now, but repetition makes it no easier to bear. The air hangs heavy on them all and it is far more than the smoke which even sea winds cannot clear. A perpetual sunset has marked the southwestern sky for the last three days, the pyre of Pillar Wood. And now another victim labours for his last breaths, surrounded by every comfort they can offer but sorely lacking the only ones that would make a difference.

The bottle in his hand is heavier than it has ever been before. He can count every drop by the heft of it, and he stares down at the little vial, counting the lives it will never save. He wonders if a little girl ever stood like this, measuring life in drops of liquid too red to be blood. He wonders if it felt as heavy to her, and how she found the strength to carry it.

A cry goes up; death has come to Cair Paravel again. His arm rises; in his mind's eye he can see the shattered bottle leaking useless red across the stones. He does not throw it. He sets it gently in a stone chest, shutting the lid with a sound like a sarcophagus closing. That is fitting, for the treasure room has become as much of a tomb as she will ever have.

He climbs the stairs with tread no heavier than his heart, and goes to join the mourners.


End file.
